What Shall We Do? Part 24

There may be magicians for whose activity there is a demand and to whom men give casks and spirits; but we cannot even imagine the existence of magicians who, while their magic is not wanted by anybody, require to be fed simply because they wish to practice their art. Yet in our world this is the very position of the men in church and state, of the men of science and art. And it all proceeds from that false conception of the division of labour, defined, not by reason and conscience, but by deductions to which these scientists so unanimously resort.

Division of labour, indeed, has always existed; but it is correct only when man decides it by his reason and conscience, and not by his making observations on it. And the conscience and the reason of all men solve this question in the simplest and surest way. They always decide the question by recognizing the division of labour to be right only when the special activity of a man is so necessary to others, that they freely offer to feed him in compensation for what they ask him to do for them.

But when a man from his infancy up to his thirtieth year lives on the shoulders of other men, promising to do, when he finishes his studies, something very useful, which n.o.body has ever asked him for, and then for the rest of his life lives in the same way, promising only to do presently something which n.o.body asks him to do, this would not be a true division of labour, but, as it really is, only the violation by a strong man of the labour of others; the same appropriation of other men's labour by a strong man, which formerly Theology called Divine predestination; Philosophy, Inevitable Conditions of Life; and now Scientific Science, the Organic Division of Labour.

The entire importance of the ruling science consists in this alone. This science is now the dispenser of diplomas for idleness, because in her temples she alone a.n.a.lyzes and determines what activity in the social organism is parasitic and what organic. As if each man could not decide much better and more quickly, too, by consulting his own reason and conscience.

As formerly, both for clergy and for statesmen, there could have been no doubt as to who were most necessary to other people, so now for the believers in Positive Science it seems that there can be no doubt about this, that their own activity is undoubtedly an organic one: they, the factors of science and art, are the cells of the brain, the most precious cells of all the human organism.

Let us leave them to reign, eat, drink, and be feasted, as priests and sophists of old have before them, so long as they do not deprave men!

Since men are reasonable creatures they have discriminated good from evil, making use of what has been done in this direction before them by others, have struggled with evil, seeking a true and better way, and slowly but unceasingly have advanced in this way. But always across the road different deceptions stood before them, trying to a.s.sure them that this struggle was not at all necessary, and that they should submit to the tide of life. First the awful deceptions of the old Church; little by little with dreadful struggle and effort men got rid of them: but scarcely had they done so when in their place arose new ones--state and philosophical deceptions.

Men freed themselves from these too, and now a new deceit, a still worse one, has sprung up in their path,--the scientific deception.

This new deception is exactly what the old ones were: its essence consists in the subst.i.tution of an externality for reason and conscience, and this externality is _observation_, as in theology it was _revelation_.

The snare of this science consists in this, that having exposed some bare-faced perversions of the activity of reason and conscience, it destroys men's confidence in both reason and conscience. Hiding their lie clothed in a scientific theory, scientists a.s.sure men that by studying external phenomena they study undeniable facts which will reveal to them the law of man's life. Things which are the property of conscience and reason are now to be discovered by observation alone.

These men lose the conception of good and evil and thus become unable to understand those expressions and definitions of good and evil which have been worked out during the entire former existence of mankind.

All that reason and conscience say to them, all that they have said to the highest representatives of men since the world has existed, all this, in their slang, is "conditional and subjective." All this must be left behind.

It is said that by reason one cannot apprehend the truth, because reason is liable to error: there is another way, unmistakable and almost mechanical,--one must study facts on the ground of science; that is, on two groundless suppositions, Positivism and Evolution, which are offered as the most undoubted truths. With mock solemnity the ruling science a.s.serts that the solution of all the questions of life is only possible through studying the facts of nature, and especially those of organisms.

The credulous crowd of youth, overwhelmed by the novelty of this authority,--not only not destroyed, not yet even touched by critics,--rush to the study of these facts of natural sciences, to that "only way" which, according to the a.s.sertion of the ruling doctrine, alone can lead to the elucidation of all questions of life. But the farther the students proceed in this study, the farther do they remove not only the possibility of solving the questions of life, but even the very thought of this solution. The more they grow accustomed, not so much to observe themselves, as to believe other men's observations on their word (to believe in cells, in protoplasm, in the fourth dimension of matter, and so on), the more the form hides from them the contents.

The more they lose the consciousness of good and evil and the capacity of understanding those expressions and definitions of good and evil which have been worked out in all the former career of mankind, the more they appropriate to themselves that special scientific slang of "conditional" expressions which have no common human meaning in them.

The farther and farther they get into the thick forest of observations lighted by anything, the more they lose the capacity, not only of independent thought, but even of understanding other men's fresh human ideas which are not included in their Talmud. But chiefly they pa.s.s their best years in losing the habit of life, that is, of labour, and accustom themselves to consider their own position justified, and thus become, physically, good-for-nothing parasites, and, mentally, dislocate their brains and lose all power of thought-production.

So, their capacities more and more blunted, they acquire by degrees self-a.s.surance which deprives them forever of the possibility of returning to a simple, laborious life, and to any plain, clear, common, human manner of thinking.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

The division of labour has always existed in human society, and I daresay always will exist; but the question for us is, not if it has been and will still continue, but, what should guide us in providing that this division may be a right one.

If we take the facts of observation for our standard, we refuse to have any standard at all: for every division of labour which we see among men, and which may seem to us to be right, we shall consider right; and this is what the ruling Scientific Science is leading us to.

Division of labour!

"Some are occupied with mental and spiritual, others with muscular and physical, labour."

With what an a.s.surance men express this! They wish to think it, and so that which is transparently the ancient violence, seems to them in reality a fair exchange of services.

"Thou," or rather, "you" (because it is always the many who have to feed the one),--"you feed me, dress me, do for me all this rough labour which I require of you, and to which you are accustomed from your infancy, and I will do for you that mental work to which I have already become accustomed. Give me bodily food, and in return I will give you the spiritual."

The statement seems fair; and it would really be so if such exchange of services were free; if those who supply the bodily food were not obliged to supply it before they get the spiritual. The producer of the spiritual food says, "In order that I may be able to give you this food, you must feed me, clothe me, and remove all filth from my house."

But the producer of bodily food must do his work without making any claims of his own, and he has to give the bodily food whether he receive spiritual food or not. If the exchange were a free one the conditions on both sides would be equal. We agree that spiritual food is as necessary to man as bodily. But the learned man, the artist, says, "Before we can begin to serve men by giving them spiritual food, we want men to provide us with bodily food."

But why should not the producers of this say, "Before we begin to serve you with bodily food, we want spiritual food; and until we receive it, we cannot labour?"

You say, "I require the labour of a ploughman, a smith, a book-maker, a carpenter, masons, and others, in order that I may prepare the spiritual food I have to offer."

Every workman might say, too, "Before I go to work to prepare bodily food for you, I want the fruits of the spirit. In order to have strength for labouring, I require a religious teaching, the social order of common life, application of knowledge to labour, and the joys and comforts which art gives. I have no time to work out for myself a teaching concerning the meaning of life,--give it to me. I have no time to think out statutes of common life which would prevent the violation of justice,--give me this too. I have no time to study mechanics, natural philosophy, chemistry, technology; give me books with information as to how I am to improve my tools, my ways of working, my dwelling, its heating and lighting. I have no time to occupy myself with poetry, with plastic art, or music. Give me the excitements and comforts necessary for life; give me the productions of the arts."

You say it would be impossible for you to do your important and necessary business if you were deprived of the labour that working-people do for you; and I say, a workman may declare, "It is impossible for me to do my important and necessary business, not less important than yours,--to plough, to cart away refuse, and to clean _your_ houses,--if I am deprived of a religious guidance corresponding to the wants of my intellect and my conscience, of a reasonable government which will secure my labour, of information for easing my labour, and the enjoyment of art to enn.o.ble it. All you have hitherto offered me in the shape of spiritual food is not only of no use to me whatever, I cannot even understand to whom it could be of any use. And until I receive this nourishment, proper for me as for every man, I cannot produce bodily food to feed you with."

What if the working-people should speak thus? And if they did, it would be no jest but the simplest justice. If a workman said this, he would be far more in the right than a man of intellectual labour; because the labour produced by the workman is more urgent and more necessary than that of the intellectual worker, and because a man of intellect is hindered by nothing from giving that spiritual food which he promised to give, while the workingman is hindered in giving the bodily food by the fact that he himself is short of it.

What, then, should we intellectual labourers answer, if such simple and lawful claims were made upon us? How should we satisfy these claims?

Should we satisfy the religious wants of the people by the catechism of Philaret, by sacred histories of Sokolof, by the literature sent out by monasteries and cathedrals? Should we satisfy their demand for order by the "Code of Laws," and ca.s.sation verdicts of different departments, or by reports of committees and commissions? And should we satisfy their want of knowledge by giving them spectrum a.n.a.lysis, a survey of the Milky Way, speculative geometry, microscopic investigations, controversies concerning spiritualism and mediumism, the activity of academies of science? How should we satisfy their artistic wants? By Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Turgenief, L. Tolstoy? By pictures of French _salons_, and of those of our artists who represent naked women, satin, velvet, and landscapes, and pictures of domestic life; by the music of Wagner, and that of our own musicians?

All this is of no use and cannot be of use because we, with our right to utilize the labour of the people and absence of all duties in preparation of their spiritual food, have quite lost from sight the single destination our activity should have.

We do not even know what is required by the workman; we have even forgotten his mode of life, his views of things, his language; we have even lost sight of the very working-people themselves, and we study them like some ethnographical rarity or newly-discovered continent. Demanding for ourselves bodily food, we have taken upon ourselves to provide the spiritual; but in consequence of the imaginary division of labour, according to which we may not only first take our dinner and afterwards do our work, but may during many generations dine luxuriously and do no work,--we, in the way of compensation for our food, have prepared something which is of use, as it seems to us, for ourselves and for science and art, but of no use whatever for those very people whose labour we consume under the pretext of providing them in return with intellectual food; not only is of no use, but is quite unintelligible and distasteful to them.

In our blindness, we have to such a degree left out of sight the duty we took upon us, that we have even forgotten for what our labour is being done; and the very people whom we undertook to serve we have made an object of our scientific and artistic activities. We study them and represent them for our own pleasure and amus.e.m.e.nt: but we have quite forgotten that it is our duty, not to study and depict, but to serve them.

We have to such a degree left out of sight the duty we a.s.sumed that we have not even noticed that other people do what we undertook in the departments of science and art, and that our place turns out to be occupied.

It appears that while we have been in controversy,--now about the immaculate conception, and now about spontaneous generation; now about spiritualism, and now about the forms of atoms; now about pangenesis, now about protoplasms, and so on,--all this while the people none the less required spiritual food, and the abortive outcasts of science and art began to provide for the people this spiritual food to the order of various speculators, who had in view exclusively their own profit and gain.

Now, for some forty years in Europe, and ten years in Russia, millions of books and pictures and songs have been circulating; shows have been opened: and the people gaze and sing, and receive intellectual food, though not from those who promised to provide it for them; and we, who justify our idleness by the need for that intellectual food which we pretend to provide for the people, are sitting still, and taking no notice.

But we cannot do so, because our final justification has vanished from under our feet. We have taken upon ourselves a peculiar department: we have a peculiar functional activity of our own. We are the brain of the people. They feed us, and we have undertaken to teach them. Only for the sake of this have we freed ourselves from labour. What, then, have we been teaching them? They have waited years, tens of years, hundreds of years. And we are still conversing among ourselves, and teaching each other, and amusing ourselves, and have quite forgotten them; we have so totally forgotten them, that others have taken upon themselves to teach and amuse them, and we have not even become aware of this in our flippant talk about division of labour: and it is very obvious that all our talk about the utility we offer to the people was only a shameful excuse.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

There was a time when the _Church_ guided the intellectual life of the men of our world. The Church promised men happiness, and, in compensation for this she freed herself from taking part in mankind's common struggle for life.

As soon as she did this she went away from her calling, and men turned from her. It was not the _errors_ of the Church which originally caused her ruin, but the fact that by the help of the secular power, in the time of Constantine, her ministers violated the law of labour; and then their claim to idleness and luxury gave birth to the errors.

As soon as she obtained this power she began to care for herself, and not for humanity, whom she had taken upon herself to serve. The ministers of the Church gave themselves up to idleness and depravity.

_The State_ took upon itself to guide men's lives. The State promised men justice, peace, security, order, satisfaction of common intellectual and material wants; and, in compensation, men who served the State freed themselves from taking part in the struggle for life. And the State's servants, as soon as they were able to utilize other men's labour, acted in the same way as the ministers of the Church.

They had not in view the people; but, from kings down to the lowest state functionaries, in Rome, as well as in France, England, Russia, and America, they gave themselves over to idleness and depravity. Now men have lost their faith in the state, and anarchy is now seriously advocated as an ideal. The state has lost its prestige among men, only because its ministers have claimed the right of utilizing the people's labour for themselves.

_Science and art_ have done the same, a.s.sisted by the state power which they took upon themselves to sustain. They also have claimed and obtained for themselves the right of idleness and of utilizing other men's labour, and also have been false to their calling. And their errors, too, proceeded only from the fact that their ministers, pointing to a falsely conceived principle of the division of labour, claimed for themselves the right to utilize the work of the people, and so lost the meaning of their calling, making the aim of their activity, not the utility of the people, but some mysterious activity of science and art; and also, like their forerunners, they have given themselves over to idleness and depravity, though not so much to a fleshly as to an intellectual corruption.

It is said that science and art have done much for mankind.

That is quite true.